


Bullet With Butterfly Wings

by blackkat



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, M/M, Magnificent Bastard!Orochimaru, Orochimaru's Morals Are Not Your Morals, Time Travel, no one is nice, vaguely a dark!fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-06-10 10:30:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6953020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the record, this is not how his grand defection from Konoha was supposed to go. </p><p>(Or, Orochimaru attempts to save the world. Hatake Sakumo may have been part of the plan, but he’s also very much an unexpected complication.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. where dwells the breath of all persisting stars

**Author's Note:**

> So this is about 45% ramabear’s fault (go read her fics, everyone ever, because they're amazing and so is she) and 35% EmeraldBenu’s fault (who is amazing and fantastic and my partner in crime and headcanons for the entirety of forever) and 20% me wanting to revisit this crack ship I'm inexplicably fond of. Through a lens of time travel, b/c that’s my kink. Uh, sorry. Only not. 
> 
> The title is from the Smashing Pumpkins song of the same name. Chapter titles come from ee cummings again, this time _If I Believe In Death_. Don’t judge me.

He comes back to some semblance of self in a meeting, with voices echoing all around. There's a rush like vertigo, like standing on the shores of the ocean, dropping a pebble into the water and watching the ripples become tsunamis half a world away.

Shift—

Twist—

 _Change_.

He staggers, the familiar floor beneath him lurching wildly, but no hands grab for him

(he doesn’t expect them to, but)

and he falls, tumbles hard to land on his knees. There's an empty aching in his chest, the taste of paradise lingering hot-sharp and rotted-sweet on his tongue, but it may as well be ashes

(he dreamed he dreamed he dreamed but it doesn’t matter what he dreamed anymore does it? how many of them died in their dreams and never woke at all?)

for all that it really means. A cough tears itself from his throat, hard enough to make him gag, and he chokes on that falsely perfect dream, the one no man or woman alive would believe him capable of having _(“How many would believe me, child, if I told them what you dreamed?”_ ) but which has slipped its barbed claws into his very soul. It shouldn’t linger, shouldn’t hurt, but oh, illusions always hurt the most, don’t they?

Orochimaru has experience with that ache.

There's a familiar-forgotten voice in his ear, sharp and raised in clear concern, and that too is familiar-forgotten, remnant of another life that is no more. Remnant of a life he discarded like an old scaled skin when it failed to suit him any longer (when _he_ failed to suit _them_ any longer) and this man is the one who pulled the first stone from the framework.

“Sensei,” he says, and it rasps in his throat, doesn’t quite manage to fit his mouth. A life is a long time, after all. Long enough for habit to become entirely unfamiliar. “Sensei, where am I?”

(An act but not, misdirection that seeks direction, the opening lines of the greatest role he’s ever played but maybe, just maybe, it’s closer to the truth of him than any role before.)

There's a long, fraught pause, tension-tight with the beginnings of true worry, and hands that aren’t nearly as aged and gnarled as he remembers them to be curl around his bowed shoulders, push him gently back. Orochimaru moves with them, allows the man who was once his world to shift him like a dazed child, and looks up through the veil of his hair into a face that lacks the liver spots and craggy lines he’d forgotten weren’t always present.

“Orochimaru,” Sarutobi says carefully, gently. More gentle than he’s been with anyone but Tsunade in decades (months). “Tell me the last thing you remember.”

A shift behind him, in the long shadows of a dying day—a woman, pretty, with long blue-black hair and pinwheel eyes, shifting scarlet and a clear reminder. Orochimaru thinks of pale skin and a stubborn jaw, a broken boy with rage and vengeance wrought into some semblance of function. ( _Her son,_ he thinks, and is startled by the realization—and startled again by the similarities he can see split between the face in his memories and the face before him. Young, proud, unbowed, ethereal in the fading light, capable of breaking into the most glorious shards when struck at just the right angle.)

“ _Orochimaru_.” Sharp, that tone—not the first time he’s been called, and Orochimaru belatedly wonders at the effects that sliding back so many years could have on the human mind

(his mind is his greatest weapon, his only weapon against a world so set to hate and fear him that the only thing he could ever do was prove it right, gloriously, chaotically right—)

then drags his wayward, scattered thoughts back under control. He sinks back on his heels, pressing a hand over his face until he’s sure all traces of his thoughts have been overwritten by less honest confusion.

“I—the graveyard,” he says, and it rasps uncomfortably (how many decades now since he last visited his parents graves?), but the inadvertent tremor is enough to lend it credibility. “I left them—I brought them the first irises from my mother’s garden.”

Strong fingers, tight around his shoulder but somehow gentle in the same moment. Warm, human, not a resurrected corpse brought back by Orochimaru’s own hand to aid one broken beautiful boy’s quest for answers. “Spring,” Sarutobi says, and there's something that’s equal parts bewildered and furious in his voice. “Your last clear memory is from spring?”

“I…has it gone already?” Orochimaru asks slowly, and this is where the play shifts from plausible to damning. “It feels—long ago, but somehow like no time has passed at all.”

Uchiha Mikoto kneels beside them, all coltish limbs and an assassin’s grace

(Sasuke on the battlefield, raw power and desperation, torn twenty ways between what he wants and what he should do and what his burning-bright teammate friend beloved wants of him, moving with that same grace as his own ancestor tries to cut him down—)

with just enough room between the three of them for propriety, for killing if there's an attack.

(She doesn’t realize he’s the most dangerous one in the room.)

Her eyes are still blood and midnight, not aged enough to be wise but sharp with the bone-bare foundations of it. “There's chakra around him, but it’s not like anything I've seen before,” she says, quiet as though he won't hear her. “Genjutsus _can_ distort the victim’s impression of the passing of time.”

Sarutobi's lips pull tight, but he doesn’t respond. This gaze is weighted with age and experience, and Orochimaru meets it carefully, a calculated risk. Whatever his old teacher sees there, it makes him soften his tone as he asks, “Did you see anyone, Orochimaru? In the graveyard, was there anyone with you?”

“I…” Orochimaru casts his eyes down, shifts his expression into thoughtfulness, consideration touched with a hint of wariness. “I think—no. There was. He was…waiting for me beside the gate. It made me angry, because he had no right to see me there.”

“Do you remember what he looked like?” Sarutobi makes it sound like a request for information, but it’s silk bound around the steel of a Hokage's demand. “Could you identify him if you saw him again?”

Orochimaru wants to laugh, vicious and victorious.

(How do you catch a monkey? Threaten the tribe, threaten a child under his protection no matter how old that child seems. Give him a puzzle with half the pieces missing and a correct answer that will never make sense, but with assumptions that are so very easy to believe, distracted as he is with watching for a threat that will never come.)

He doesn’t, traps the sound behind his teeth and shifts his expression into faint bewilderment, a studied lack of understanding. “Sensei, what do you mean? It was Danzō.”

A sharp breath, a pause, and Sarutobi closes his eyes and breathes out, the sound vibrating with checked fury. “Danzō,” he repeats. “You're sure?”

Sure that this is the course he wants to take? Of course he is. Sasuke is not the only one who vengeance calls to, not the first to surrender anything for one moment of bloody retribution. Orochimaru’s has been too long in coming; he’s not one to take betrayal lightly.

“Of course,” he says, perfectly guileless, with an edge of hidden irritation at being questioned—he remembers very well how he used to be. “Should I not have recognized him?”

“No,” Sarutobi says, as gentle as the first breath of a storm-wind sweeping down from the mountains to ravage the plains. He shifts back, rises to his feet with an ease that will soon be stolen by age, and brushes down his robes with absent hands. “No, Orochimaru, I'm very glad you told me. Mikoto, my dear, I believe I’ll survive on my own for an hour or two. Would you help Orochimaru home?”

Painted lips pull tight, unhappiness and rebuke touching her features. She rises as well, but instead of stepping away she offers Orochimaru her hands.

(How novel, he thinks, and pretends he doesn’t remember slim shoulders ahead of him, leading him into a battle that Orochimaru only joined for his sake.)

He wonders why it feels like a greater choice than any before, to take them and let this little slip of a girl pull him back to his feet.

“Hokage-sama,” she says as her eyes move past him, warning and plea in the same breath. “Please remember—cornered rats bite back.”

Sarutobi smiles at her, the barest quirk of lips edged with determination and old bitterness. “I'm well aware. But there's only so long one can live, and so many things that must be done. This is one of them, and it’s a risk I must take.”

Mikoto flicks a glance back into the shadows, where another stock-still form hovers, watchful and wary. It inclines its head, and she nods back, though her frown doesn’t ease. “I don’t like this,” she says, bluntly honest in her worry.

“Duly noted,” Sarutobi answers firmly. “Take Orochimaru home, and remain close. I'm not yet sure what the night will bring.”

“War,” Orochimaru says, and it’s so very simple to make his voice distant, distracted as he looks out the window, judging how long until moonrise. Not for a while yet, he thinks, and is pleased. “There was…talk of Iwa, and how to escalate things. Bodies in the pass, he said. Theirs and ours, but the same beneath. Root out all hope of peace to make the village strong again.”

There's fury in the lines of Sarutobi's placid face, wedged in beneath his calm façade. Quick hands reach for a cold pipe, a light; the flicker of flame is a blaze of brilliance against the seeping shadows. “Go home, my boy,” he says, steady as the surf, with the threat of drowning waves in the slow retreat of civility. “Rest. Think on what you might have seen, and tell me in the morning. Mikoto.”

“Yes, Hokage-sama.” She bows, perfect and fluid, and straightens again.

(Orochimaru thinks of lightning from a clear sky, the burn of chakra like the edge of a storm. Thinks of dark eyes half-mad with grief and betrayal, hiding a deeper pain beneath. Of himself entranced, entrapped, and was this how Jiraiya felt, once upon a time, staring at a boy with sky-blue eyes and sunlight in his smile?)

“This way, sir,” Mikoto tells him, polite and firm, but with care in her expression. She’s wary of him, as everyone is, but there's softness in her concern.

(He wonders, distantly, what her son would have been without revenge riding his soul, but dismisses it; not half as interesting, he’s sure.)

She doesn’t ask him if he’s capable of walking, and he’s glad. Playing the victim grates on his patience enough as it is, no matter how necessary the act. He inclines his head to her, then bows to his teacher, and the motion is more nostalgic than he had expected. It’s been years, decades, since Orochimaru last bowed his head to anyone.

He doesn’t expect it to last long, but he can appreciate the novelty of it in this moment.

Konoha is another piece of memory brought to life with unexpected clarity. The streets, the buildings, the people in the dusty street—he looks at them, at the way their eyes slide past him and their bodies unconsciously turn away, and wants to laugh again. He’s used to fear, to hate, but only when he’s earned it. This fear is empty, of a concept more than a man. They fear his snakes, his looks, his chakra, his family. Fear the edge of madness they claim to see in him, even if there's never yet been one among them who suffered it.

( _Tenzō_ , he thinks, and wonders how soon Sarutobi will come upon that lab. Not too soon, he hopes—there are still things that are salvageable within it, that boy most of all. His greatest success, after Anko. Anko, who’s nothing but a babe right now, with parents, with a future. The thought of saving her crosses his mind but doesn’t linger; Anko is a hurricane, a tempest, a battlefield with blood soaking into the grass and laughter in the air. She’s the most glorious thing to ever come from his hands, and he’s hardly about to refrain from molding her because morality says he _should_.)

A slim hand reaches for his shoulder, and he twitches away from it automatically, sliding around the touch. Mikoto hardly blinks; she simply steps aside, towards a street that meanders lazily in the direction of the forest. It’s familiar, even more than the rest of Konoha, and Orochimaru sets his feet on it with a faint sense of wonder inescapably laced with bitterness. Another thing abandoned when he shed Konoha as a snake does its skin, and he wonders what happened to the house his father built in his own time. Did it simply fall into disrepair? Was it torn down? Did looters strip it to its bones in some spiteful, empty form of revenge?

Not that it matters now, he knows. But—it’s a thought, that’s all. Konoha truly does have a tendency to bring out the worst in him.

( _“How many would believe me, child, if I told them what you dreamed?”_

 _“No one living,” Orochimaru answers with certainty. Another hesitation, but he takes the proffered hand, trying not to flinch at the spark-crack of power that dances across his nerves at the brush of skin on skin, and Hagoromo doesn’t pause as he pulls Orochimaru up, out of the dust and blood-clumped ash that covers the ground._ )

“If you must hover, do it out here,” Orochimaru says, and his unease adds bite to his voice. “The edges of the property are trapped, and I have no desire to pull you out of every seal you stumble into. Mind your feet.”

A spark of hot-bright temper, a flare of indignation. Mikoto eyes him coolly, but her expression shifts to the careful blandness of understanding in the face of wounded minds and she inclines her head. “I’ll keep watch,” she confirms, and slips into the surrounding trees, vanishing like a ghost.

He wonders if Itachi is born yet, tries to calculate ages even though his mind is better saved for more important things. Likely not—Mikoto wouldn’t still be ANBU if she were a mother.

Moonrise is still at least two hours away, so he has time to spare. More than he would like, to be honest—patience may be one of Orochimaru’s skills, but this is something different. This is a bet with unknown variables, made on remembered rumor and the assumption of a chance. He _believes_ it will come to fruition, but there's no guarantee.

Of course, there was never a guarantee that any of this would work, and so far it has. Perhaps the odds are tipped in Orochimaru’s favor.

Perhaps they're not.

( _“Madara has won,” he says, and there's no little amount of bitterness in it. Despite an entire world joined against him, Madara has won, and Orochimaru feels rather as though he’s been beaten personally—his pride is a strong thing, but perhaps a bit too easily dented._

_Hagoromo hums thoughtfully. “Perhaps better to say my mother is winning,” he corrects. “The children are fighting her now, and have my power shared between them, but I more than any know how powerful she is. I would have a…contingency, as it were.”_

_“And you chose me,” he says, though with the memory of effortless happiness so close it takes effort to keep his voice from breaking. “How… audacious of you.”_

_Hagoromo studies him for a long moment. “Most would say that. But you returned with your student, even though you professed to want nothing more to do with the rest of the world’s wars. Why?”_

It promised to be interesting _, Orochimaru wants to say, but at the last moment doesn’t._

 _The half-lie falls flat on his tongue._ )

Muscles strung taught with irritation and anticipation in equal measure, Orochimaru turns on his heel, away from the empty house that his father had built as a wedding present for his mother, away from the echoes of old ghosts that linger around the steps. He’s not one for regret in any form, but—

He wonders, sometimes, why things ended the way they did. More often when something happens to call those ghosts back. Jiraiya's death, whispered about in reports to Team Taka and half-heard where Orochimaru slept, suppressed and bound, in Sasuke's psyche, was one such time. It was…a shock, to hear, to understand that Jiraiya, loud and bold and shameless in all his manners, with a soft heart and a hard head and too much optimism and faith for any mortal body to contain, had—died. So simply. So ignobly.

Their days as teammates, as friends, are long since passed into memory, but the fact that Jiraiya died alone, at the hands of the students he gave so much of himself for, strikes Orochimaru as an injustice the world should never have done someone as valiant and bright as Jiraiya. It seems…unfair, and even if Orochimaru knows full well that nothing in life is ever otherwise, he can't quite shake the sentiment.

If there is one thing Orochimaru has ever feared, it’s death. His own death, the deaths of those he once held dear. Belief in reincarnation and transmigration is well enough, but it means little to those left behind. It’s unpredictable, unscientific. Orochimaru has never found a way to track it, predict it, and little grates at him more.

(He thinks, sometimes, that he will always be that little boy standing before a fresh grave, the papery shed skin of a white snake curled in his hand. Asking _why_ and _how_ and _do you really think so_ , a sense of hope bubbling up in his chest. He’s misplaced that sense so many times, lost sight of it but never truly lost it. Even at his most distracted there was always the memory of Sarutobi's words, a stray thought of how to trace reincarnations through the years.

But as with his dream, how many people would ever believe that of him?

No one, he thinks, and it’s both bitter and satisfied all at once.)

 But it isn’t regret, not here. Not now, so many years out of time. Reassessment, more than anything, another look at the actions and reactions that led from this uneasy peace, this cold war, to the dream-dazed battlefield he came from, every shinobi from each of the Five Great Villages trapped like butterflies pinned to a card.

( _Perhaps better to say my mother is winning_ , an offhand comment in an aged and ancient voice, but for Orochimaru it is the taste of ashes and broken dreams that can never come to be.)

He’s setting the foundations of the greatest plot he’s ever woven, something that will stretch to incorporate the entirety of the ninja world, or at least its future. This version of Sarutobi trusts him still, no matter how misguided that trust is, and Orochimaru’s carefully unspoken claim—aided by Mikoto’s presence in a way he hadn’t anticipated—that Danzō laid a genjutsu on him, controlled him, will be enough to turn Sarutobi's suspicions on his old teammate. Danzō is a war hawk, after all, and though he has yet to order Sarutobi's assassination, he’s been vocal and unsubtle enough about his beliefs that, with the evidence in Root’s files and the labs they lead to, Sarutobi will believe the claims.

The first time, Danzō was the driving force of the Third Shinobi World War, disguising Root members as Iwa shinobi killed by Konoha, setting Hanzō against Akatsuki, pushing experiments on any bloodlines he thought might be useful, decrying any attempts at peace as an insult to the memory of those who died in the fighting. Without him to push the conflicts to new heights, Orochimaru is sure that Sarutobi will end the war far more quickly than before. And, should things go as he plans them to, the lack of Danzō’s plots will make up for Orochimaru’s own absence.

He hates Konoha. He’d forgotten, having been absent for so many years, but he truly loathes the closed minds and proud hypocrisy of this village, its hatred and shunning of anyone different or _dangerous_. Such a bright surface, such pretty gilding, but the heart beneath is as black and rotten as any other ninja village.

(He supposes, when he bothers to consider it, that that was one of his motivations in gathering the freaks, the outcasts, the undesirables when he constructed Sound. No one fit in there unless they fit in nowhere else, and…it’s likely that wasn’t entirely by accident.)

Sound will rise again, if his plans come to fruition tonight. Orochimaru has spent too long as his own lord and master to go back to bowing before a Kage. That dream is done with, banished to the recesses of his mind as a childish whim, and he no longer cares to look upon it.

_(“How many would believe me, child, if I told them what you dreamed?”_

_“No one living,” Orochimaru answers with certainty._

And—he hasn’t thought of it before, but does he count himself among their number?)

Anger quickens his steps around the edges of the treeline, back towards the large garden his mother always kept. Not overgrown, still neatly maintained, because Orochimaru could never allow himself to let it run wild. One of his clearest images of her is a woman as tall and slender as a willow wand, her long black hair caught in a loose braid and her oldest clothes stained with dirt like a common farmer. She’d carried a basket on her arm, overflowing with fresh vegetables, and his father had leaned on the gatepost and teased her about mixing poisons with the ingredients for their dinners. She would laugh, always, and lead Orochimaru by the hand, show him the white snakeroot and water hemlock and oleander, ask which flavor he wanted in their soup tonight.

For all that Jiraiya always claimed he had no sense of humor, those jokes Orochimaru understood. He’d solemnly pick one, and carefully not smile when his father protested.

In the shadows lengthened by the nearly-vanished sun, the garden is bare and empty, winter-dead, with only the faint warmth in the soil to hint at spring’s approach. Orochimaru skirts the edges of the weathered wooden fence, not quite able to stomach stepping within right now. The small creek that runs through the garden’s center is full, and the stones lining its banks clack under Orochimaru’s sandals as he turns sharply, following the water’s meandering path back towards the forest.

This is madness, all of it. How can one man be expected to stop a war? How can one man, even one as clever and skilled and blatantly powerful as Orochimaru, be expected to save an entire world?

It’s possible. It has to be, because Orochimaru refuses to accept any other possibilities. But it feels far too much like being backed into a corner, given only one way out. Very much like how his deals with Danzō always made him feel, because Orochimaru is no one’s pawn. He did Danzō’s experiments because _he_ was interested in the outcome, because he was clever enough to find the answer Danzō had spent decades looking for in the space of a few months. And yet, in his fall from grace, Danzō remained untouchable, beyond reproach.

Orochimaru shed Konoha like an old skin and has never mourned the change, but—that grated. That _itched_ at him, that Danzō could be the impetus behind so many of his darker choices, and Sarutobi never blamed him. Sarutobi blamed himself before Danzō, for not seeing Orochimaru cross the lines he did, for not stopping him, but the man who led him across was never held accountable.

This time, with the evidence Orochimaru will leave and the accusations Orochimaru won't leave him room to deny, Danzō will take the blame. And if he doesn’t, well. Poison is one of Orochimaru’s specialties, just the way his mother taught him. He’ll lace every bite Danzō eats, every drink he takes, the very air he breathes until Danzō finally gets his due.

Given what Sarutobi thinks Danzō did to him, what Sarutobi knows of Orochimaru’s own nature, he won't even have to be particularly subtle about it.

What comes next—that will take subtlety. Manipulation on a level Orochimaru rarely has to resort to. Then again, he’s planning to turn one of Konoha's most stalwart defenders, if not against the village, then at least to his side rather than Konoha's.

Well. Perhaps no longer quite the “stalwart defender” that he was, given recent events, but that is more of Konoha's great hypocrisy and Orochimaru feels no need to continue it.

( _“You are one of the few players in this game who knows where every piece falls, child. I leave it to you to rearrange them in such a way as will provide for a happier outcome.”_ )

Those words—he’d wanted to laugh at them. Such faith in the good nature Orochimaru already knows he lacks. Such _optimism_ , coming from a man whose legacy helped the world tear itself apart. But…not misplaced, perhaps. Not _correct_ , but not misplaced, either. Orochimaru has never played the villain all that well, at least in his own mind. The science was always more important that petty morals, human grudges, ethical limits. Boundaries and lines make little sense to him, especially in the context of a shinobi’s work; Sarutobi tried to teach him, once, but Sarutobi's own morals are skewed and sideways and tattered around the edges, and it never helped. Jiraiya has always been an optimistic fool more than anything, and his lessons would have left Orochimaru dead long ago. Tsunade—

Tsunade is broken, shattered, fractured. She’s hardly a shinobi anymore, not in any way that counts. Not _his_ Tsunade, if he could ever call her that, who was so fearless and focused and brilliant.

Sometimes, Orochimaru thinks that it was her departure that made him cease to care. Before he had pretended, at the very least, to be the same, to follow the blurred, indistinct lines Konoha sketched into the sand; after, he no longer gave a damn. Why should he? He’d been abandoned, left behind, while morals and sentiment drove his team, his one anchor in a formless world, to shatter irreparably.

He blames them, partially, for his fall. For this end, bitter and tragic as it is. Perhaps it’s not fair, but then, Orochimaru’s fate itself isn’t fair. He was the genius, the strongest, the most cunning. Why should he be the monster as well?

Why did _any_ of them have to be the monster?

The first feeble edge of moonlight glitters on the water before him, and Orochimaru pauses, watching it ripple and distort. He hadn’t thought he had spent so much time in reminiscence, in bitterness, in planning, but his has always been an obsessive personality. It’s no surprise that this isn’t any different.

But it’s time. Time to see if all his plans will come to something good, or if he’ll be left scrabbling for a contingency. It’s possible—all things are possible, and the last few months of his life have more than proven that.

Turning, he casts his senses out, searching for Mikoto’s chakra signature. It’s strong and bright, easy to find, and she’s not looking in his direction. Outward, instead, as though some other threat will come that rivals one of the Sannin, and it makes him want to laugh. The inattention is useful, though, and he turns casually to put his back to her, bringing his hands up in the seal for a shadow clone. Its appearance is seamless, soundless, and Orochimaru darts into the heavy shadows as it continues its restless pacing around the perimeter of the garden. Half a moment to make sure there are no eyes on him, no traps beneath him, and Orochimaru calls up a shunshin, forgoing the usual distracting, dramatic swirl of leaves.

The burst of speed leaves him back near the road, hidden in the darkness and far out of Uchiha Mikoto’s sight, and Orochimaru touches down lightly. There's no one to be seen, no one he can sense, so he doesn’t bother with subtlety. A hand brushing down his robes, another glance at the moon, and he starts walking east, along the treeline. There's a house some distance away, set far enough back that only the faintest glitter of the porch light reaches the road.

The house of a legend, of Konoha's newest social leper and scapegoat. The key to Orochimaru’s plans, should he agree with them, and for once Orochimaru isn’t certain that his manipulation will resolve itself the way he wants it to.

Konoha's White Fang is anything but an average man, after all.


	2. whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To disclaim, though you may have noticed already: this Orochimaru is not nice. He’s a bastard and manipulative, utterly ruthless and completely twisted, without apologies for anything he does. Sakumo isn’t going to be sunshine and roses either, but Orochimaru’s definitely not a hero, closer to chaotic neutral than anything. He’s also _so much fun_ to write this way. 
> 
> (And to preempt the inevitable: don’t worry. There are plans regarding Kakashi.)
> 
> (The chapter title comes from ee cummings, this time from _what if a much of a which of a wind_.)

Despite the light still glowing on the porch, the interior of the house is completely dark. Orochimaru lingers by the door for half a moment, coiled-snake-still as he watches the shadows of tall trees shift in sprays of darkness against the moonlight.

He remembers the report, cold and clinical in its wording, read once very long ago. He’d glanced over it with half an eye, because the uncomfortable twist-turn of his stomach brought forth too many thoughts he hadn’t wanted to consider. Derision, certainly, but…not in the proportions he would have preferred.

 _This_ , he’d thought, disgusted with himself and lingering traces of sentiment more than the actions a good man was driven to. _This is what happens when you care._

Orochimaru has made a point of not caring ever since.

There's still time before the brat-sized version of the Copy-Nin returns to find his father curled up in a puddle of his own blood. An hour, if Orochimaru judges the path of the moon correctly, and it’s so little time in the larger scheme of things, but…enough. Perhaps.

He has other plans, if this fails to be profitable. None so simple, or so expedient, but there's always a risk when dealing with steady, honest men. Orochimaru has experience corrupting others, but always they’ve had a seed of darkness in them to begin with. Those like Jiraiya, Naruto, Kakashi himself—they cling too tightly to their morals to be tempted by the power he can offer them. Twisting a good man to his aims—he’ll have to be _truthful_ , _honest_ , and Orochimaru dislikes little more than letting others see him with even the smallest portion of his walls lowered.

Still, he reminds himself, laying a hand on the latch. The truth is just another manipulation, just another way to bend a man’s mind to his will. Like the spirits in folk tales, compelled not to lie by a foolish priest, who nevertheless tell just enough of the appropriate truth to lead their captor to his doom.

Orochimaru has no intention of dooming Hatake Sakumo, or for that matter the world at large. It’s been decades since he cared for anything more than his own interests, and despite what Jiraiya always feared Orochimaru needs no power beyond what he himself can hold. Politics are overall amusing, but distantly so. Such petty jockeying is useless in the long run, and such power is intangible, unmeasurable. Orochimaru would prefer to focus on physical strength, quantifiable might.

( _Sasuke_ , something in him whispers. _You cared for Sasuke_. _Cared enough to follow him into the third great war of your lifetime, as if all the others hadn’t stolen enough from you. As if you had any desire to fight at all. But he went, and you followed, and what does that say, stone-heart?_

He ignores it, pushes it down. Monsters don’t care, and he’s never been anything else.)

Another flicker of self-directed irritation pushes him forward, snake-slide silent as he opens the door and ghosts into the silent house. Even from here the smell of blood is heavy in the air, sweet-copper-sharp in his throat, and Orochimaru opens his mouth automatically, flicks his tongue and tastes blood and something thicker, the metal of a bared blade. The blood is still coming, still fresh—it hasn’t pooled yet, hasn’t settled into a stain on the floorboards that will never come out.

He’s in time, then, as he knew he would be.

Down a dark hallway, into a room with moonlight just starting to spill through the windows. Shadows lie across the half-curled form in the center of the floor like prison bars, stark against the silver light, and Orochimaru takes a brief moment to study the man, dispassionate, assessing.

( _Weak_ , he thinks, and then dismisses it. Previous actions have proven that Hatake Sakumo is a legend in his own right; this is an aberration in a set of data, a deviation in a previously steady upward trend. It can be overcome, Orochimaru is sure. Given the…correct motivation.)

Green chakra flickers around his hands, ghostly in the semidarkness. He kneels beside Sakumo, heedless of the blood that soaks into his pale blue robes, and grips one broad shoulder, tugging the man onto his back.

Sakumo rolls with a low groan of pain, and his eyelids flutter. Agony adds lines to his face, but Orochimaru only spares him the most cursory of glances before turning his attention to the gaping wound in his stomach. Let it never be said that Hatake Sakumo doesn’t know how to gut a man, Orochimaru thinks with a trace of dark amusement, tugging the torn shirt away and laying a hand over the wound. He’s not Tsunade, can't perform the miracles she conjures so effortlessly, but this is simple, straightforward. A deep wound, and a killing one if left untended ever a few minutes more, but entirely repairable.

The work is quick; within a handful of moments there are further signs of recovery in the body beneath him, and one hand attempts to rise, batting newborn-pup weakly at him.

“So there's life in you yet, Hatake,” Orochimaru tells him, coolly amused. “That’s good. Open your eyes.”

A pause, as if Sakumo is resisting just for the sake of being stubborn. Then, slowly, dark eyes slit open, pain-dazed but coherent. “No,” he whispers, fading-faint.

Another touch of biting annoyance twists around Orochimaru’s nerves, even as the last raw edges of the cut seal together. Pulling his hands away, he sits back, and casually reaches for the tantō that lies discarded nearby.

“No?” he asks, cold and clear with knife-sharp edges. “I just saved your life, Hatake.”

Those eyes fix on him, an undercurrent of fury in the normally placid ash-grey. “No,” he rasps again, and coughs painfully. “This—I can't—”

Orochimaru snorts. “Can't live with the whispers?” he mocks, aiming to draw blood. “Can't bear the _shame_? Grow up, Hatake. Lesser men than you have endured such things all their lives and stood strong against it.” In a blurring sweep of motion, he half-lunges forward, slamming the red-painted tantō down and driving the blade inches into the floor, just to the side of Sakumo's cheek.

“You sparked a war that’s been brewing for a decade now,” he hisses, holding the startled, wary gaze without wavering. “But there are bigger stakes in this game than grudges between old men, Hatake. The Third Shinobi World War is going to begin shortly. I don’t care. I've removed the most dangerous players from the field already, and Sarutobi is a shortsighted, peace-loving fool, but he’s a clever one. The war will be over soon enough. But another one is brewing, and all of the countries will fall to it. _Gods_ will fall to it. So help me. Atone for the deaths you’ve caused here by preventing those yet to come.”

Sakumo's breath catches. He breathes in, then out, closes his eyes. When he opens them again his face is set, grim. “That’s why you saved me?” he asks.

Orochimaru sneers at him, rising to his feet in a smooth shift. “I’d hardly do it because we’re _friends_ ,” he points out. “Save your sentiment for Jiraiya or Sarutobi; I want no part in it. You are strong, and as matters stand you have few reasons to remain in the village for the duration of the mission. When it has been completed, you can return a hero. For now, you must prove that you are one again.” He pauses, looking down at the sprawled and bloodstained figure, and adds, almost absently, “To others, and to yourself, I think.”

There's a long, careful pause, Sakumo studies him, and the mindless reactionary is fading now. In his place rises the shinobi, quick-sharp and clever. “You're leaving the village.”

Seeing no point in denying it, Orochimaru inclines his head. “As you just attempted to do. However, my version of burning bridges is far less permanent than yours.”

Sakumo flinches slightly, dropping his gaze, and swallows as if just seeing the crimson that paints him. “I have a son,” he says.

Orochimaru snorts. “Yes,” he mocks, “and you were so very concerned with his wellbeing ten minutes ago. Tell me, Hatake, who exactly do you think would have been the first to come across your body?”

Not just a wince this time, a full-body blanch, color leeching from his face like watercolor left out in the rain. “I—”

Entirely involuntarily, Orochimaru thinks of skin gone cold, of eyes glazed open, of bodies rent by blades and carried home by apologetic comrades who nevertheless failed to do _anything._ “Enough,” he bites out, whip-crack-sharp, and turns away. “Your merits as a parent aren’t in question here, only your skills as a shinobi. I have a war to prevent. If you wish to make amends for past actions, you can join me outside the walls, on the eastern bank of the Nakano, in a quarter of an hour. If you do come, tell no one. There are far too many unfriendly ears within the village.”

He doesn’t wait for a response, but stalks out of the room, out of the quiet little house, and closes the door sharply behind him. The moon is still up, and Orochimaru casts a glance down at his stained robes. The blood is mostly across his thighs, but it has seeped upward as well, and he’s pleased with the effect. A kunai pulled from his sleeve easily drives through the fabric in several strategic places, and Orochimaru carefully smears what's left of the blood on his hands over his throat and down. Then, with one more glance at the stillness of the house behind him, he calls up a shunshin and aims for the source of the all-too-familiar chakra that’s been itching at him since he arrived in this time.

Jiraiya's apartment is as close to the bathhouses as he can reasonably get, with a wide glass door looking out and a few very clearly dead plants out on the balcony. Normally, Orochimaru would use the front door, because there's no telling what Jiraiya is up to within, but tonight such politeness won't suit his act. And it will have to be a _perfect_ act—Jiraiya has always been able to see through him more clearly than any but Tsunade.

Still, pain and fury are easy to conjure up. Old friends in a shinobi’s life, never far away, and Orochimaru puts them on now, turns his landing into a staggering stumble and his chakra into a seething whirl of confused emotion

(easy, easy, because what has he ever been supposed to show? whatever was he meant to portray, because he’s never fully understood, even in the face of Jiraiya's mocking, Tsunade's temper, Sarutobi's patience. what emotion is there, beyond his intellect? so distant, so divorced as to be unrelated to him entirely)

as he lurches forward, colliding shoulder-first with the night-cool glass. He leaves a streak of red across the door, sliding sideways as if unable to halt his fall, and carefully weaves rarely-felt terror into the net of emotions his chakra conveys.

From within the apartment there's a loud thump, a curse, a flurry of footsteps. An instant later the door swings open, sending Orochimaru falling, but—

This time hands catch him. This time arms come up to wrap around his chest, halting his graceless tumble, and Jiraiya says, “Orochimaru!” in the familiar tone that is three parts indignation and seven parts worry.

“Jiraiya,” he says, one hand coming up to grip worn cloth, and the relief that colors his voice is…perhaps not as much an act as he would like.

( _“How many would believe me, child, if I told them what you dreamed?”_

_“No one living,” Orochimaru answers with certainty. Another hesitation, but he takes the proffered hand, trying not to flinch at the spark-crack of power that dances across his nerves at the brush of skin on skin, and Hagoromo doesn’t pause as he pulls Orochimaru up, out of the dust and blood-clumped ash that covers the ground._

_It’s true, he thinks, even though he spoke the words without considering them first. Tsunade believes him evil, broken, even with his recent turn of assistance; Sarutobi is nothing but a resurrected corpse, and a beaten one at that—he might let himself be convinced that Orochimaru is not rotten through, but then, his old sensei has always been a fool where Orochimaru is concerned._

_Only Jiraiya ever had faith in his better nature, and even Jiraiya doubted just as often as he believed. And—the thought of him is uncomfortable, even now. Their days as teammates, as friends, are long since passed into memory, but the fact that Jiraiya died alone, at the hands of the students he gave so much of himself for, strikes Orochimaru as an injustice the world should never have done someone as bold and bright as Jiraiya. It seems…unfair, and even if Orochimaru knows full well that nothing in life is ever otherwise, he can't quite shake the sentiment._

_Jiraiya has always been his greatest foil, hasn’t he?)_

“Jiraiya,” again, because he can't stop his mouth

(he dreamed he dreamed he dreamed but it doesn’t matter what he dreamed anymore does it? how many of them died in their dreams and never woke at all?)

(how much does he wish to linger there still, in fantasies and falsities, just so long as all of them were _happy_?)

not here and now, when it counts. Never, ever when it counts.

( _Hate me_ , he used to think, because once there had been nothing, and even utter loathing was worlds better than nothing.)

Big hands cup his elbows, haul him up with careful attention to the false wounds, but when Jiraiya tries to pull him inside Orochimaru resists.

“Orochimaru,” Jiraiya says, and that tone is fully concern now, edged with alarm. “What the hell happened to you? You look—you look like…” Fear in his eyes, he reaches up to touch the blood on Orochimaru’s throat, and it’s not an act when Orochimaru twitches back and away from his fingers, but it makes his gaze go dark with something like terrible fury.

“I'm leaving,” Orochimaru tells him, and watches the alarm beat out every other emotion in that familiar, well-remembered face. “I can't—”

“Who.” It’s not a question so much as a threat, twisted through with the intent to make things _right_ that will always leave Jiraiya a fool. Then his expression softens, and he ducks his head (giant _bastard_ ) to put himself at eye-level with Orochimaru. “Please, Orochi. Who hurt you?”

Orochimaru allows the silence to linger for a long moment, then shifts his eyes away, raising a hand as if unconsciously to press against his throat. “Root,” he finally allows, threading reluctance through his tone. “I—there was a genjutsu. It broke. And—I'm going. I can't stay here.”

Truth, in the most basic sense. Shattered bits strung together, just enough to fool an honest man, or mislead an honest fool.

Jiraiya is quick. Too fast for Orochimaru to pull away, he seizes his hands, grips them tightly. “No,” he says, just a note less than sharp. “Orochimaru, running isn’t going to solve anything. Stay and face them like the bastard you are. Sarutobi-sensei and I will—”

“You can't protect me from him,” and it tastes like the rotten-rancid ashes of that dream still coat his tongue. “Jiraiya, I had no reason to tell you, but—” He swallows down the _I thought I should_ that is half a lie too much to pass, hesitates over the words that might replaces it, and finally decides on, “We are…friends.”

How long since he last spoke those words? More than fifty years now, he thinks, but they come to his lips with surprising ease, slip into the air and fall between the two of them, half challenge and half concession.

(How do you manipulate an honest man?)

Jiraiya's eyes turn warm, fond, fearless in the way that Orochimaru could never hope to emulate no matter how much cool disdain he shows the world. He cups Orochimaru’s shoulder, and the worry hasn’t faded entirely, but at least it’s eased. “See a medic first?” he suggests, but not as if he has much hope that Orochimaru will agree.

(You tell him the truth. There's no surer way.)

Orochimaru hides his smirk in the fall of his hair, and when he looks up he lets only gratitude show in his eyes. Jiraiya has always needed to be everyone’s hero, after all. “Thank you,” he says, and because there was never truly a chance before, because maybe he always wondered how things would have changed between them had he spoken those words, he also says, “Goodbye.”

There's a long, careful moment of silence, fragile-thin like the beating of butterfly wings, and then Jiraiya sighs softly. He steps away, running a hand through his flyaway white hair, and says with wry humor and bitterness mixed, “You and Tsunade—I'm losing both of you, aren’t I, and there's nothing I can do.”

Orochimaru remembers him walking away in Ame, shoulders bent under the weight of sins he never should have claimed, and feels a flicker of old, half-forgotten anger. “We were never the first to leave, Jiraiya,” he says, and though he means it to come out biting, it…doesn’t quite manage to. Weary, he thinks, more than anything else, because Jiraiya had been gone and Tsunade and Orochimaru both had little idea if he’d ever return. There had been a war raging, battles to be fought, but Jiraiya had turned his back on all of it.

Dan had died barely two months later, far away on a lonely field, and the cracks in Tsunade that had formed with Nawaki’s death were suddenly soul-deep and seeping poison. A month after that she had disappeared into the night, taking Dan’s three-year-old niece with her, and—

Well. Orochimaru’s actions are his own. He’s always known that. But what would have changed, if they had been there? How would his decisions have differed, with the only two people he’s ever cared for looking over his shoulder?

Maybe there would be no difference. Maybe nothing would have changed, and the end would remain the same. But.

(There's always a chance, isn’t there?)

There's no answer from his teammate, not a word in defense or protest, because Jiraiya has always accepted blame for everything and anything. Orochimaru doesn’t look at him, doesn’t want to see what expression he might be wearing; he looks away, pushes fully to his feet with his eyes fixed on the bloated moon.

Farewells are wasted time.

(He doesn’t think _I shouldn’t have come_ , because that’s what second chances are for. A different route, rather than the same plodding course. A variation in the process to achieve a altered outcome. The data will reflect what his heart cannot see.)

(Oh, but monsters have no hearts. A logical fallacy, then, isn’t it? What doesn’t exist can't feel as if it’s breaking.)

 

 

The rush of the river in the gorge below is amplified in the darkness, loud enough that it sounds closer than it is. Moonlight leaves the ground a stark study of shapes and lines, traced in silver and black, and turns the surrounding trees to shifting sentries as the wind ghosts past.

Out of sight of the wall, finally beyond Konoha's borders, Orochimaru feels something tension-tight finally start to ease from his spine. He remembers the last time he was in the village, barely hours ago and decades in the future—still bearing traces of Pein’s attack, emptied of nearly all its shinobi. Remembers Sasuke in front of him, grimly determined to finally uncover some form of truth, but unprepared for what he eventually found.

( _“The children are fighting her now, and have my power shared between them, but I more than any know how powerful she is. I would have a…contingency, as it were.”_

He wonders how they fared, Sasuke and Naruto battling Ōtsutsuki Kaguya together. He’d asked, then, why Hagoromo hadn’t sent them back together, and been fixed with the kind of patiently tolerant look Orochimaru might have bestowed upon Sasuke at his most obtuse, when the shadow of his brilliance burned itself out chasing Naruto's light.

And oh, how familiar, Orochimaru thinks, unable to tell if the twinge in his chest is bitterness or regret. How familiar, that the genius falls second to the fool, but is too entranced to ever care. They're snakes before a charmer, both of them, and the music has caught them inexorably in its grip. Even now Orochimaru feels the pull of the tune; to him Jiraiya is months dead, the only reminder of him a lonely little shrine in a faraway wood, but he still manages to make himself Orochimaru’s bane, and not simply because here and now he is alive, untouched.)

Shadows slide apart, and a figure steps forward from the edges of the trees. Familiar, even if Orochimaru only ever knew Hatake Sakumo distantly, before. The man is a legend in this time, a hero to outstrip all three of the Sannin. A shame to see him brought down, and for so many years Orochimaru has wondered—

But he supposes it doesn’t matter now. Whatever Danzō has had his hand in, he won't be a problem for much longer. Either Sarutobi or Orochimaru himself will see to that.

“I take it you’ve decided, Hatake,” he says, forcing his voice to lightness away from the weight of his thoughts. Too many thoughts—Konoha is no good for him, and never has been.

“Because you left me so much choice,” Sakumo says, level and even, but there's a trace of a wolf’s growl beneath the placid tone.

Involuntarily, a shiver of anticipation, of _interest_ crawls down Orochimaru’s spine, and he feels his breath catch, his attention sharpen. Oh, but he’d forgotten, hadn’t he? Too many years spent dealing with Hatake Kakashi, who was an abandoned dog, too wounded by the world to be much of a true threat, kicked too many times to do more than bare his teeth and snarl. But Hatake Sakumo—he’s a wolf in every way, wilder than a dog could ever hope to be, for all that he wears a mask of domestication well. How fascinating. How _amusing_.

Maybe this won't be quite the chore Orochimaru has been expecting.

“We all have choices,” he retorts, and it takes effort to hold himself back, to keep from finding the cracks that snake through Sakumo's defenses. He wants to poke and prod and push, see how far he can drive this cornered wolf before it turns to savage him. Not yet, he tells himself, though restraint has never been one of his virtues. Only later, once Sakumo is committed, once there's no chance of him turning and walking away. Then Orochimaru can test him.

There are still lines of grief and despair in Sakumo's face, but he’s changed his clothes, strapped an unfamiliar sword to his back. Not the tantō, Orochimaru assesses, judging weak points. Too tempting? Left as a twisted sort of gift for his son? Too thoroughly tied to his career as a Konoha shinobi?

Whatever it is, Orochimaru decides he’ll find out. Sakumo is suddenly _intriguing_ , and it’s as though a previously greyscale figure has abruptly come into focus, flooded with unexpected color.

After all, Sakumo isn’t wearing his hitai-ate anymore. There's no sign of it on his person, no symbol of any sort on his plain black-and-grey clothes to set him apart from a hundred other unaffiliated shinobi scattered around the Elemental Nations. Orochimaru had expected pride, some way of Sakumo to remain clinging to his past. Not this sudden divorce, complete and certainly thorough.

“I've come to realize that, sometimes, things that look like choices end up being solid walls instead.” Sakumo crosses his arms over his chest, fixes Orochimaru with a predator’s level stare. Orochimaru is used to being the biggest threat in any given room—the Fourth War’s battlefield is the first time since his fight with Hanzō that he has truly felt outclassed—and the sudden shift is interesting, if not something Orochimaru will allow to stand for long. “Explain it to me, Orochimaru. More than just rumors of a coming war. Tell me why it’s worth abandoning Konoha to stop this.”

Orochimaru wants to point out that Sakumo has already decided, clearly—he wouldn’t be dressed the way he is if he hadn’t. But people dislike logic, he has learned, don’t care for clear reasoning the way he does.

“You want more?” he asks, amused, and slips forward, circling Sakumo with steady steps. The man turns, eyes locked hunter-sharp on him without wavering, and it makes Orochimaru want to push, and push, and push until that faint hint of danger rises to the surface. What's the point of having such interesting darkness in him if he always keep it so tightly leashed? Why play the dog when the wolf could be a king?

“I think you owe me that at least.” Quiet, steady, just a hint of a threat that bypasses the caution in Orochimaru’s mind and instead curls around his curiosity. Jiraiya has always said it will get him killed one day, hasn’t he?

“I owe you nothing,” Orochimaru counters, and there's a smirk pulling at his lips, intent and on the verge of taunting. “But I'm fond of questions, so I suppose I can answer this one. I was under a genjutsu, a—terrible one.” Sweetness turned to poison on his tongue, ashes so thick in his mouth that they clogged his chest and stopped his throat. A thousand other faces equally caught, Kage just as trapped as any chuunin. “He gave me proof. The words on the Uchiha’s Shrine have been twisted by a creature formed of a goddess’s will. Madara was fooled into believing a fantasy of a perfect world, and preserved himself so he could create it.”

Seeing the disbelief that slides across dark eyes, Orochimaru laughs softly, stepping away. “Let me show you,” he proposes, glancing back over his shoulder with just a hint of challenge. “Let me convince you, Sakumo. The threads are already pulling tight; we have only a few years to cut them from the loom. But…this much time I can spare.”

There's a very long pause, the rushing of the river rising to fill the silence as the moon sails through a tattered bank of clouds. Sakumo is staring at him, assessing, contemplative, and at length he takes a breath. “You stayed when the rest of your team didn’t,” he says quietly. “I noticed. So I'm going to assume you're not the type to abandon the village for no reason, especially right now. But you're sure this leads to another war?”

And…that’s a way of looking at it that no one has before. Orochimaru hesitates, can't quite help the way his eyes slip sideways from Sakumo's face to study the darkness beyond him. _Loyalty_ , he thinks, and wants to laugh, but the sound will cut his throat like glass. _He thinks I'm loyal_.

Honest men are all fools, and not all the power in the world can change that, it seems.

“Certain,” he says, instead of responding to that parts he’d rather not have heard. ( _Untrue, untrue_ , his mind whispers, but are they? But they have to be.) “Soon Madara and the creature Zetsu will take a pawn from the Uchiha Clan—one of their strongest, in the future, but currently overlooked. There are plans already laid that will be devastating to Konoha—Rinnegan eyes to an Uzumaki boy in Ame, traps set for the Kyuubi, soldiers grown for attacks to come. Zetsu is the threat—in its hands, Madara is just another piece on the board. But there are…clones, scattered like seeds across the Nations. I plan to root them out, leave the creature blind and deaf. Will you assist me?”

“Yes,” Sakumo answers, as simply as that. Orochimaru had expected more argument, more stalling, and he narrows his eyes at the man. Sakumo sees the expression, and offers a crooked, tired smile in return. “I'm a dead man, Orochimaru. There's nothing you can take from me that I haven’t already thrown away.”

Despite himself, Orochimaru thinks again of his parents’ bodies, laid out so carefully as if to compensate for the fact that they were dead. Thinks of blood on the floor and a tantō driven deep into the wood, both marks that will never come out. “Your son?” he asks before he can quite stop himself.

Grief leeches what little animation there is from Sakumo's face, and he looks away. “Kakashi is strong. He’s never needed me. And with my actions, my shame—I’ll only destroy him if I stay. He means too much for me to let that happen.”

 _It’s not forever_ , Orochimaru thinks of saying, but dismisses the impulse. Sakumo likely knows that already, and wouldn’t be comforted even if he didn’t. “Then let us go,” he says instead, careful-courteous and just faintly laced with mockery. “There's an old Root facility in Rice Paddy Country that will do well as a base of operations. We can make further plans there, and I have…things to be obtained in the area.”

Things to do, as well. This is his original body, far better suited to the Sage transformation than his temporary vessels. Always before something has blocked Orochimaru from managing to achieve the final step, but perhaps, here and now, with his new wisdom and old form, there's a chance he can do better. A chance to attain the power that should be his right as Manda’s summoner. Attempting it will be dangerous, but…worthwhile, perhaps.

“Weapons?” Sakumo asks, falling into step with him as Orochimaru turns east.

Orochimaru thinks of Kimimaro, of Jūgo, of Karin. Thinks of Tenzō, whom he will double back for before Sarutobi has the opportunity to uncover that lab, of Anko whom he will collect in time. Such beautiful tools, perfectly crafted by both nature and lack of nurture and the skill of his hands.

Perhaps it won't be like it once was, but it will be enough.

“In a manner of speaking,” he says, and laughs whisper-sharp and snake-sly when Sakumo glances sideways at him in uncertainty.


End file.
